1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for producing reinforcements made of fibers (carbon, glass, boron, etc. . . .) for components of composite material, as well as the reinforcements and composite components obtained by the implementation of said method.
2. Background Art
Numerous methods for obtaining such components of composite material, which consists of a fiber reinforcement embedded in a cured matrix, are known. The first step is to produce a reinforcement of such fibers distributed along at least two directions, after which the material of said matrix is injected into said reinforcement and said material is cured in order to form the matrix.
From European Published Patent Application No. 0,073,648, it is already known to produce such a fibrous reinforcement by assembling, and stitching a plurality of distinct fibrous elements. In particular, with respect to FIG. 9 of the above-mentioned document, a method is described for producing a fibrous reinforcement for a component of composite material which comprises at least two orthogonal walls, according to which method fibrous elements are produced, which respectively represent said walls, one of said fibrous elements is applied against a face of the other fibrous element and said fibrous elements are joined together by stitches.
The technique described in European Published Patent Application No. 0,073,648 has some disadvantages.
First, in order to produce said fibrous elements, it requires webs of fabric which are joined together by lines of stitching, which greatly complicates the production of said fibrous reinforcement.
Furthermore, this technique requires that one of the fibrous elements comprises auxiliary lateral flanges which enable it to bear against said face of the other of said fibrous elements and are necessary for joining these elements. The result of this is that these lateral flanges form areas of additional thickness on said face of the other of said fibrous elements, such areas of additional thickness are a nuisance and influence the mechanical and physical characteristics of said other element.
It will be noted, moreover, that the fibrous element with lateral flanges:
behaves poorly in bending, particularly around the connection between said flanges and the rest of said elements; PA1 prevents the other element, against which it is applied and fixed, from having too great a curvature (which prevents for example the production of a component in which said element with lateral flanges would form a stiffener for a dome, formed by the other element); PA1 prevents the presence of stitches in said fibrous element, in areas other than the flanges of the latter, which creates a heterogeneity.